


such selfish prayers

by mine_eyes_dazzle



Series: caught between the devil and the deep blue sea [3]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Drowning, F/M, Vesper Lynd is Alive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-09
Updated: 2016-11-09
Packaged: 2018-08-30 00:24:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8511628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mine_eyes_dazzle/pseuds/mine_eyes_dazzle
Summary: And he’s there. She thought it was over. She thought it was all over. And here he is.  - a sequel to a holy fool, all coloured blue, Vesper/Bond.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Bedroom Hymns by Florence + the Machine.

_such selfish prayers_

_cause your pain is a tribute,_

_the only thing you let hold you._

third eye, florence + the machine.

 

* * *

 

And he’s there.

 

She thought it was over.

 

She thought it was all over.

 

And here he is.

 

…

 

Gustav is sitting across from her, his packed lunch splayed over his lap. She’s curled into the sofa.

 

"And, älskling, she looked at me like I was insane. Like I was the one who had walked in with sixteen cats!"

 

She smiles. "Sixteen cats?"

 

He nods energetically. But then he falls silent, and she can feel his gaze on her.

 

"What is wrong, älskling?" he asks, leaning forward on the sofa. "I tell my little stories and usually you are laughing all night."

 

She shrugs and avoids looking him in the eye, instead staring out the window.

 

"Look, it's snowing." And it is. She never saw snow like this until she came out here. The isolation makes it beautiful, she thinks. Snow in England just doesn't compare.

 

"Oh no no, you do not answer my question." He moves his food on to the table and reaches across to put his hand on hers, but she moves away.

 

"Gustav, I…" she starts, but cannot finish. She is transfixed by the snow now, the way it drifts down, spiralling, the silence she knows it will bring. The silence is why she is here. The rest of the world is far too loud for her now.

 

"I am a bad person, Gustav."

 

He shakes his head at that, muttering no into the late evening air.

 

"Yes,’ she says. ‘I have done terrible things."

 

Gustav frowns at her and she sighs. He can't understand. He thinks he knows her, he thinks they are friends, he thinks she is kind and wonderful and happy. She doesn't have the heart to tell him she is none of those things, because she hasn't had a friend, a real one, someone who likes her for her, in such a very long time.

 

"And I have lived with the guilt for so long."

 

She looks down at her feet, at the floor.

 

"Is that why you are here, älskling? Is this, oh how do you call it - penance?"

 

She clasps her hands together.

 

Penance. Forgiveness. Atonement.

 

Oh what she wouldn't give. Gustav’s right. Penance is what this is. The cleansing of her sins.

 

She should never have made friends with Gustav. She made a promise to herself before she came out here. No one to know, no one to lose. And yet here she is, and Gustav is looking at her with a frown on his face and she wants to scream because she oh so wants to be the woman he thinks she is, but she is not. She never can be.

 

"Yes, Gustav," she says. ‘Penance."

 

…

 

He’s sitting in the lobby, reading a newspaper. There’s a martini on the table beside him, untouched.

 

As she goes past, he folds the newspaper, crumpling it and placing it next to the martini.

 

"Hello Vesper," he says.

 

She does not say anything.

 

It cannot be him, not here.

 

She is imaging things.

 

She remembers the first night she spent in Gustav’s company. They talked for hours about the snow, and the hotel, and Gustav’s wonderful little family, and Sweden, and she laughed for the first time in years. It was addictive, the glimpses of a life she could have had, for in his eyes she is a human, just like all the rest, living and breathing and being.

 

She is not a dead woman walking to Gustav.

 

To James Bond, however, she will never be anything but.

 

…

 

What she should have done:

 

Ignored him, until he had to repeat himself and then say, quietly, in the crisp night air, "You are talking to me, sir?"

 

And then when he would say, "Yes," impatiently she would reply, "And what would you like sir?"

 

He would look at her, frown.

 

"Vesper?" He would sound a little unsure this time, only slightly so, hidden behind an aura of bravado.

 

"No. No Vesper here, sir," she would say, and it would be true.

 

And he would leave and she would spend the night shift with Gustav, chatting the hours away aimlessly.

 

And things would be okay, or as okay as they could ever be.

 

…

 

But it does not happen like that.

 

He says her name and she freezes, halfway across the room.

 

She turns slowly.

 

"No," she says, quietly, to herself as she takes in his appearance. The separation between their last meeting has done little to him. His is slightly older, his eyes a little more tired, but he is clearly the same man.

 

"Vesper, I need your help," he says.

 

She looks at him. Of all the things she expected him to say, this was not one of them.

 

"I need you to help me."

 

…

 

He gives her his room key, tells her to meet him there when she can.

 

And then he is gone.

 

She wanders in a daze to the front desk, where Gustav waits, smiling for her.

 

"Älskling," he says, excited, "you will never believe what," he continues. "Maja, she gives birth to a little baby. A boy. I am a grandfather."

 

His joy is palpable. She knows his story. Three children with his wife, Märta. Two boys and one girl. She knows his children all live back in Sweden and he misses them terribly. Knows that he has been working in this hotel for ten years, since his children all left home.

 

"Oh, Gustav," she says. "I'm so happy for you. Congratulations."

 

He beams at her and then he pulls her into a hug. As he holds her in his embrace, she realises why she hasn't pushed him away, why she allowed him to get to know her, at least a little.

 

He reminds her of the little bit she still remembers of her father.

 

She rests her head on his shoulder.

 

"What is it?" he asks, softly. "What is it that is making you want to cry?"

 

She breaks away then.

 

"I wish…" she begins, but her voice catches painfully. "I wish everything was simple, Gustav."

 

"It can be, if you let it."

 

She laughs then. It's bitter, angry.

 

"No."

 

He frowns. It's then she realises she’s holding on to the room key James gave her so tightly the sharp points are digging into her skin, biting it and turning her skin is white.

 

"Oh god, Gustav, nothing can ever be simple. Even if I want it do. I did bad things and I have to pay for them."

 

"It seems to me," Gustav says slowly, taking her closed fist and uncurling her fingers to uncover the key, "that to find repentance you have to let yourself find it. And I do not think running away will get you anywhere, älskling."

 

…

 

She knocks once on the door.

 

When James opens it, she follows him in, awkwardly. She is used to being on the other side of these walls.

 

She stands, arms folded, watching, tensed.

 

James slumps in a chair.

 

And then he looks up at her, and begins to tell her a story.

 

…

 

It starts like this:

 

One day, his wife was there, and the next, she was gone.

 

He thought, maybe, she had left him, but if she had she had left all her clothes, all her things.

 

There are clues, here and there, whispers he follows and follows but he never gets any closer. At least now he is sure that she has been taken. Whether she is still alive is another matter.

 

It has been two weeks so far. He has lost hope.

 

And that is where she comes in. She is the hope.

 

…

 

She leans against the wall.

 

"You want me to help you to find your wife?"

 

He looks down at the desk, at his hands, his feet, the floor; anywhere but at her.

 

"Yes."

 

She studies the curve of his cheek and remembers how it felt to cradle her palm against it. The memory hits her, a moment she has not recalled for years now. The feeling of his skin under her fingers, mapped and traced and loved.

 

How did they get to now, when they had such a future?

 

She finds she is drawing her nails over the white lines on her wrist again.

 

"Alright."

 

One word.

 

Maybe this is finding repentance. Or maybe not.

 

She'll have to wait and see.

 

…

 

They talk for hours, spy to spy, no room for nostalgia, for emotions to cloud their thinking.

 

She realises quickly that she is surprising him with her aptitude for this kind of work. She can see it is confusing to him to see her like  this, this antithesis of the woman she once was, the woman he knew.

 

But this is what their love made her, and there is no changing that.

 

...

 

She has no time for goodbyes. James tells her that. She thinks he expects her to have no one, and she wishes she did. When they drive away from the hotel, she looks back, face pressed up against the glass, praying she will see Gustav behind her, smiling, waving, telling her she is doing the right thing.

 

(what James doesn't know is she slipped into Gustav’s office before she left and wrote him a note, scrawled handwriting quick and nearly illegible. _Thank you,_ it said. Two words. Then she put a handful of notes on top, a couple of grand, she has money to burn and Gustav seems worthy.)

 

She cries in the car, quietly so James won't notice. This has been the closest to a home she has found in the last fourteen years, since the water claimed her.

 

She will miss it.

 

…

 

They fly to Belgrade to follow up a lead.

 

She slips back into her old shoes with ease. The feeling a gun in her back pocket is familiar yet just distant enough to feel wrong.

 

When she told Gustav she wasn't a good person she wasn't lying. There is so much blood on her hands. The guilt pools hard in her stomach once again.

 

She nearly turns around and says to James she can’t do this, and flee back to the Swiss alps where she is anonymous and Gustav can continue telling her silly stories about the hotel guests and his family. That is enough for her to survive.

 

But there’s something inside that tells her she has to do this. To let it go. To let MI6 and M and Venice and James go.

 

To be human again.

 

(and what she wouldn't give for that)

 

…

 

Belgrade turns out to be a dead-end, so the travel to Zagreb, to where James thinks there might be a chance to pick up a trail.

 

It’s been three weeks now, since she was taken.

 

James is yet to give up, her assistance giving him new hope, but she has lingering doubts that, even if they find the trail, James’ wife will still be alive. Or if she is, she thinks maybe, she will not wish to be so.

 

She is tempted to bring up her fears, her doubts, but James remains unapproachable. They are colleagues now, working together for a common goal, nothing more, nothing less. They are not friends (though, have they ever been?) and they are certainly not lovers, so there remains a cold, clinical distance between them.

 

And so she says nothing.

 

And she waits, and waits and waits.

 

…

 

Until:

 

Its early morning. Not long before Christmas. They're in Berlin. She returns from a trip to the market for food. If she doesn't buy food she isn't sure James would eat.

 

She stumbles into the apartment and James is there, lying on the floor, asleep; papers and maps and devices stretched out beside him.

 

He looks like a child, asleep, the years taken away from his face.

 

She grabs a blanket, throws it over him to stop the chill invading his bones.

 

She goes to the kitchen, makes herself a cup of coffee.

 

He wakes after twenty minutes and pads, confused, into the kitchen.

 

"Did I fall asleep…?" he asks, like a child.

 

"Yes," she says, quietly.

 

And then, out of the blue: "She’s dead, isn’t she?"

 

Four weeks now. A month and nothing.

 

"I don't know, James." A sigh then a sip of coffee. "I really don't know."

 

"I think we should stop."

 

"Your choice," she says, leaning back against the kitchen counter, shrugging.

 

"What if I stop looking?" he begins, awkwardly. "What if I stop and she’s you?"

 

She frowns.

 

"What d’you mean?"

 

"What if she’s not dead?"A pause, then: "Like you."

 

She shrugs.

 

"I can't answer that question, James."

 

…

 

 

She wonders what it makes her when, sometimes, in her darkest moments, in the black-end of night, she wishes that Madeleine is dead.

 

…

 

It’s four in the morning.

 

She can hear James in the kitchen, his insomniac feet across the floor, the sounds of cupboards being opened and then closed. Finally, the low buzz of the TV rumbles through the apartment.

 

She lies on the bed, the early morning chill creeping in under the curtains.

 

She wonders whether she should go and talk to him.

 

After a few minutes, she makes up her mind, swings out of bed. She pads across the hall and finds James on sofa, the blue light of the TV washing over him.

 

“I have an idea. One last chance."

 

He doesn't turn to look at her. He continues to stare at the TV.

 

…

 

London is strange.

 

It has been years since she was last here. The familiar streets are reminders of a past she fled and she shivers in the winter rain outside the airport.

 

The building looms before them, as they wander through the streets, silent.

 

She thinks, idly to herself, that she can count on one hand the times she walked through the front doors here, and here she is once again, after all this time.

 

She promised herself last time she wouldn't come back. Oh well. It's too late now.

 

…

 

Nothing has changed.

 

Eve is still there. She raises an eyebrow as they enter, uninvited.

 

She hangs back, slips into a seat, looks down at the ground. James goes up to Eve, and they converse in quiet tones that she cannot hear.

 

When they finish talking, he moves away, and sits beside her.

 

Silence, and she can feel Eve’s gaze on the pair of them. She knows within these walls she is a mystery.

 

The other woman keeps looking between the two of them, the phone clamped to her ear, every so often whispering a word or two into the handset.

 

It takes half an hour, and then the doors fly open, cold air rushing into the room.

 

"I was in a bloody meeting," M snaps, moving past them towards his office. He turns to Eve, leaning back in her chair, watching them all carefully. "With the Prime Minister," he adds, to underline his point.

 

He opens the door to his office.

 

When neither of them move, he turns back to them, frowning.

 

"Come on in then."

 

...

 

"Well," M says, slowly.

 

He's taken off his coat, and is sitting behind his desk.

 

Even being in this room, she is transported back to when she sat, blinking in the harsh light, confused and empty. When she'd been pulled from the field in Istanbul, by the woman answering the phones in the other room. When the woman who changed the course of her life fourteen years ago with threats, needle-sharp words, and a bottle of hair dye, died.

 

She looks up, takes in the room, wants to laugh. How the hell has she got to now? The broken figure of James besides her reminds her far too quickly.

 

"I can say I wasn't expecting this."

 

He looks studiously from James to her, back again, his eyes settling finally on her, on the mystery.

 

"James Bond and the woman who doesn't exist." A pause, then, _"Vesper."_

 

James looks quizzically between the two of them, M still studying her.

"I'm not going to pretend I'm not surprised," he continues. "The only thing I know about you," he says, turning to her, leaning back in his chair, "is to keep you away James Bond and yet here you both are.'

James, beside her, is still frowning.

She shrugs.

"Thing change.' She can see a flicker of anger in M's face, at another brick wall thrown up in his quest to discover who she is. Despite the years that have passed since their last meeting, it seems her identity, or lack thereof, still frustrates the usually all-seeing spymaster.

"Why are you here?'

James looks up at him then. She decides it's his story to tell.

...

M takes his time. He sits back in his chair, hands clasped together, his face twisted in careful thought.

"I should say no," he says, once James has fallen quiet. "I should say no because this isn't a threat to national security, or anything else on the brief, as such. And if the public were to discover such a disgraceful waste of taxpayers' money, they'd be up in arms." She can feel James, next to her, tensing. 

"But I think," he continues, leaning forward, resting his arms on the desk, his incisive gaze settling on them both in turn, "you have both laid your lives on the line for this country." He looks down at the desk, shuffles some papers. "And anyway, the public will never know."

"So--" she starts, but M cuts her off.

"I think that I can spare some resources, don't you?"

...

There's a hotel around the corner from MI6 headquarters and Eve accompanies them there. She becomes aware on the brief journey that the other woman knows James, something she thought she did, all those years ago, with the pointed questions on the plane journey back from Istanbul.

She hangs back, watches them as they walk side-by-side, conversing in quiet tones, and she supposes they were lovers, once upon a time. It is there, in the easy touch, the simple intimacy between them.

She wonders if it is easy to see, when she stands next to him, how close they once were. She thinks, maybe, it is not. They tend to treat each other like casual strangers these days.

Eve shows them to their rooms, across the hall from one another, informs them that in the morning she will be heading the team that M has assigned to Madeleine's disappearance. James nods, disappears into his room.

She hovers in the corridor. Sleep still is yet to offer any relief. She's not sure she's slept through the night in the last fourteen years.

As she turns, fingers locked around the door handle, she hears Eve's voice ring out.

"Who on earth are you?"

She swings around. Eve is leaning on the banister, looking back at her, a confused frown on her face.

"You know James, that's obvious. What I don't understand is how."

She's tired, the cross-continent flight taking it out of her. She folds her arms. She doesn't want to have this conversation.

"We go back," she says, shrugging.

Eve looks at her, scrutinising her, in the sharp lights of the hotel corridor.

"You're a no one. You have no past, no name, no life. Even M couldn't bloody track you down. What sort of woman are you?"

"A dead one."

Eve blinks, confused. "What?"

She kicks her feet on the plush carpet.

"Don't worry,' she dismisses, turning back to her hotel room door.

"Vesper?" Eve calls. "That is your name, isn't it?"

She freezes, and sighs.

"Yes."

She's not sure that her answer is strictly true. She has only answered to that name a handful of times in the last decade and a half. But then again, it's far easier to say yes than it is to explain.

"Vesper what?"

"Doesn't matter."

"What sort of name's Vesper anyway?"

There's the hint of smile in Eve's voice, cracking through the icy exterior.

"It's Latin for evening."

She looks, briefly, over her shoulder before she opens the door.

Her gaze meets that of Eve, standing at the top of the stairs, and a moment of understanding passes between them.

"Goodnight, Vesper," Eve calls.

"Goodnight, Eve," she returns, and then the door is shut.

...

The next day dawns, and the search restarts in earnest.

Four anonymous operatives join Eve in an attempt to succeed where she and James failed. They have unparalleled access to databases and devices which speed up the search.

She just sits at the back of the room, giving half an ear to the chatter between the four black suits and Eve, as they tap away at keyboards, and carefully analyse images and information. She's never been a team-player, her solitary life isolating her from others. She knows how to do this job alone, she always has done.

About halfway through the day, she watches James, frustrated with the lack of progress, lose it with one of the suits, snapping and pushing him up against the wall. In a flash, she's there, a hand on his arm, hissing "leave it, this won't help Madeleine," in his ear.

He turns to look at her, and for a moment she thinks he's going to ignore her, but then he drops his fists. He twists away, furious, and stalks out of the room, taking his anger out on a passing chair, which goes flying across the room. The four suits wince. She looks up and finds Eve, frowning, arms folded, staring at the door. She seems not unperturbed by James' behaviour, but by something else.

"Back to work," she snaps, turning away. They listen to her instantly. She thinks maybe they are scared of her. She goes back to her seat, and soon enough the low murmur of chatter resumes.

"How did you do that?"

She snaps up, surveillance photos spread messily across her desk, to find Eve, dragging a chair up and sitting opposite her.

"Do what?"

Eve narrows her eyes, leans back in her chair.

"Make him, you know, stop. Usually when he loses it..." Eve shakes her head. "Usually you can't stop him."

She shrugs.

"M told me last night that you said something to him once. "

She turns back to the photos.

"You told him that Madeleine wasn't the first woman he wanted to leave MI6 for."

She shuffles the order of the snaps, lifts a new set out of a folder.

"She wasn't."

She frowns, picks up one of the photos, nearly doesn't hear what Eve says next.

"And that would be you? The first woman he wanted to leave the service for?"

She slides the photo across the desk towards Eve, ignoring the question.

"Found her."

...

The four suits take the photo, examine it further, whilst she slips out of the room, leaving them to it.

She finds him down the warren of corridors, out a fire-door, sitting on a brick wall, head in his hands. She slips beside him.

"Don't," he growls.

"What?" she says. "Say that you shouldn't be laying into the people trying to find your _wife?"_ He turns to her quickly, anger flashing in his eyes. "You shouldn't be," she says, unapologetically.

Another flash, somewhere she can't reach.

"They're trying to help you." She can't help herself, reaching out a hand and placing it on his cheek, forcing him to face her. _"I'm_ trying to help you," she pleads.

Her eyes roam his face, searching for a sign, for anything.

She is suddenly taken back, the years falling away, to a balcony in an expensive hotel room, fourteen years previous. She is lying, stretched out on a chaise lounge, wearing a light, cotton summer dress. The air is crisp and bright, the sun shining. She can hear James padding through the room, and then he's coming through the French doors.

"Move up," he says, and she dutifully does so. He sits next to her, casually slinging an arm across her shoulder. "Room service will be here soon."

"What did you order?" she asks.

"Everything," he replies, and she tips her head backwards, laughing. She reaches out, ghosts her hand across his smiling face.

"God, James," she says, turning to face the gorgeous view, "it's so beautiful."

A cough brings her back to the present, and she draws away from him like she's being burnt.

"I thought you might like to know what we've found," Eve says.

James can't look at her.

"Of course," he snaps, flinching away from her and off the wall, hurrying past Eve and back inside. Both their gazes follow him, but then the other woman turns to her.

"That answers one of my questions, then," Eve notes, wryly. "You were lovers." 

"Once upon a time. A very long time ago." 

She wraps her arms around her into the winter chill. It will be Christmas in a few days, she thinks to herself. Last year was the first time she'd celebrated it for years, with Gustav and Märta, and their visiting children, Maja, Isak and Max, along with Maja's husband Milo. Gustav had invited her and against her better judgement she'd said yes. She'd brought a bottle of wine and had been accepted into the family, Gustav's little stray.  She's wondered what Gustav told his family about her. Maybe he just said she was lonely. She's not sure. She'd had fun, for a little while she allowed her fears and guilt to fall away; a one-off.

She shivers.

"Did he want to leave MI6 for you?" Eve asks. 

"Like I said," she says, standing and moving past the other woman, "it was a very long time ago."

...

When she was fifteen, she ran away from her aunt’s house four days before Christmas.

She had nowhere to go and so had roamed the streets in the dark; the air freezing, the clouds heavy with unfallen snow.

She can't quite remember why she had run away. She probably had an argument with her aunt, screaming and slamming doors on her part and cold, disapproving glares on her aunt’s.

She’d wandered the late night streets, tired and worn, waiting for morning to come.

When it had, she’d made her way to school, early, and changed into her uniform in the toilets. When the day had ended, she’d trudged home, another freezing night on the streets unappealing.

She’d unlocked the door with her key, let herself in. When her aunt had come home from work at seven, she’d been at the kitchen table, completing school work. Her aunt had paused in the doorway, watching her; she could feel her icy gaze on the back of her neck.

Then she’d come into the room, and she’d expected her to get angry, to tell her off, but instead she’d said, “Good,” and put the oven on.

She went back to her school work. She knew that education was her way out of this house that was never her home.

 

And the moment she turned eighteen, she was gone as far away as possible.

 

She hasn't seen her aunt since the September day she packed her things and left for university. She hasn't exactly reached out an olive branch herself but still, the clear rejection had been painful.

 

She wonders how a woman can look after a girl for twelve years and not care; a girl who is her flesh and blood no less.

 

She wonders what her aunt would think of her now. Maybe she was more like her than she ever thought.

 

...

 

The next dawns, and she watches the sunrise from her hotel room. She hasn't slept; she spent hours following leads, even after the other operatives had gone to bed. She had only dragged herself away when Eve had switched the systems off and demanded she leave.

 

She knows they have an early flight in the morning; her photo leading to further clues which in turn lead to substantial credence in an idea that Madeleine is being held in a facility just outside Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro. She almost laughed when Eve had informed her of the development. She’d spent the remainder of the evening going over and over the plans the tomorrow. By this time tomorrow, James could be reunited with his wife, in whatever shape they find her. Whatever happens, he’d probably have the answered he craved.

 

She hasn't been to Montenegro since she first met James. Thinking about it surprises her, she has been almost everywhere else on the globe during her time with MI6, but Montenegro had never come up.

 

But now it has.

 

The sunrise is beautiful, London lit up in an early glow.

 

…

 

She and James do not discuss Montenegro. Yesterday’s closeness has been replaced by cold distance once again.

 

When they land, the carefully laid plan springs into action. They go to their hotel, different from the extortionate one they stayed in last time, but one out of the way, anonymous.

 

The four operatives take to their hotel rooms, setting up equipment far away from the temperamental ex-agents who seem to scare them.

 

She sits, awkwardly, between Eve and James in the seating area of their suite of rooms, going over the plan again and again and again. They all know preparation is the key to success.

 

When James ducks out as the evening draws in, Eve grabs them both a beer from the fridge and they sit, in silence, side by side, looking out the window at the passing traffic below.

 

“I gave up field work,” Eve groans, suddenly, “and now I remember why. I'm done in.”

 

She leans back in her seat, watches as the other woman finishes her drink.

 

“So,” Eve draws out, "see you for show time,” she adds, disappearing up the corridor and to her room.

 

She watches her go, slumped on the chair, ice cold beer in her hand. She wonders if she should go to bed. She doesn't think she’ll sleep, but maybe she will.

 

Maybe she will.

 

…

 

And she does, a fitful sleep that is better than anything else she achieved in recent weeks.

 

Her sleep is littered with vivid, violent dreams: her father, dead on the ground; a dying man lying, contorted on the floor, his body riddled with bullet holes.

 

Sometime around three, the dreams transform, and she is underwater, gasping for air, lungs screaming, but soon that is replaced by the cold of the gun in her ribs in Amsterdam, and then the scream of the bullet in her arm, and finally, the cold grip of the icy Thames. All the times she escaped death.

 

She’s fighting for air, when she is dragged from sleep by the feeling of hands on her wrists, and she struggles, fear creeping upon her.

 

When she opens her eyes, she sees a figure, clouded in the dark, above her, and she fights to free herself. As her eyes adjust to the dark, she realises it's James above her, and she pushes him in the chest, away from her, wondering what the hell is going on.

 

"Get off me, you bastard," she hisses.

 

James rocks back on to his knees, away from her, kneeling on the covers. In the half-light, she sees a sticky trail of blood running down his face and she frowns.

 

“You were screaming,” he says. “I was trying to wake you.”

 

She scrabbles at the covers, pulling them towards her.

 

“Bad idea,” he says, and she winces. His face is matted with blood, and clearly she is responsible.

 

“I…” she stutters, but she doesn't know what to say.

 

James stands suddenly.

 

“I should go.” He turns around, then turns back, as if to say something more, but he just stares at her before he disappears into the dark.

She stares at the door, shaking.

She thinks, maybe, she prefers being an insomniac.

...

She lies in the bed, watching the late night light make patterns on the ceiling. She wonders if she always screams in her sleep. There's usually no one there to hear.

..

When morning breaks, she is all ready to go, staring out of the window, the roar of traffic rushing below, waiting and waiting.

Eve is the first to emerge, and starts when she sees her standing by the window.

"I didn't know you were up," Eve says.

She shrugs.

"I don't sleep much."

The other woman gauges her for a long moment. She wonders if she could hear the screams too, or if James was the only one. There's something in her gaze that answers the question; a wariness, mixed with pity.

Eve lets it go without mention a heartbeat later, nodding and crossing the room to pick up the phone. She just folds her arms and turns back to the rush of cars. She can see the hotel, the one they stayed in all those years ago, peeking through the skyline and it takes her eye for a second.

The second half of her life began there, with dangerous blue eyes and a suitcase full of money. This place,  like Venice, reminds her, brutally, of the time before. When she had a future, when she had a past.

She goes up to the window, puts her outstretched palm on the cold glass. Wonders what would have happened if she had turned around, and not entered that hotel with James Bond so many summers ago, but she shakes her head. The idea is too abstract, her life now so ingrained within.

She hears footsteps behind her and turns.

James pads across the room. There is a long, ugly scratch on his cheek, and she looks away.

Idly, moving back to glass, she notes it's Christmas Day.

...

Their plan whirrs into action when the early morning darkness is still clinging to the trees.

There is no finesse to their plan, a simple smash and grab; an extraction, no more, no less.

They split up. James goes with Eve in the first wave, slipping out of the hotel before she can say anything to him. Two of the suits go too, and she is left with the others, who nervously avoid her gaze, hanging around the suite, unable to meet her eye.

She continues to watch the traffic in the darkness. She wonders why she is here, why she said yes to James. She should have stayed in Switzerland, anonymous, guilty but guiltless, with Gustav, listening to his stupid stories and laughing the nights away. And yet she is here, the familiar weight of metal in her hand, images of blood on sand, and the legion of dead, spinning through her mind.

"You were in Amsterdam," one of the suits says, snapping her out of her reverie.

She turns around to face the voice, and finds it belongs to a young man, leaning back on the sofa, frowning at her. The woman sitting next to him goes to castigate him, shush him, but he continues speaking.

"In 2013. We flew out to extract a compromised agent."

She turns her head on the side, regarding the man carefully. There is something about his face, the hint of the familiar, and suddenly she can feel the cold of the aeroplane floor against her back and legs, the scream of pain roaring up her arm, hazy agony. She can see the man's face swimming in front of her, muttering 'shit, shit, shit,' as she nearly dies in front of him.

"Yeah," she says, quietly. "I was in Amsterdam, 2013."

She turns back to the window.

"I didn't think you'd make it," the man says, gaining him a nudge in the ribs from the woman sitting next to him. She watches it all unfold in the glare of the window.

She smiles, wryly.

"What can I say? It takes more than that to kill me."

She wants to laugh. She's quite sure at this point she's indestructible. Maybe she shouldn't think that, but then again, there have been so many close calls that she feels the claim is grounded in reality. Technically she's already been dead for  twenty minutes, hasn't she, seventeen in Venice and three after her dip in the Thames. And she's still here, damn it all, breathing and living.

She swivels away from the window and crosses the room until she's standing by the man who helped save her life all those moons ago. "I'm Vesper," she says. It is the strangest feeling, to say her name, the letters sticking painfully in her throat.

"Mike," he replies.

"Thank you, Mike."

...

The drive there is quiet.

She sits in the back, Mike driving and the woman she knows now is called Eleanor beside him in the passenger seat. She wonders if they are their real names. She thinks maybe they are.

That's when things start to go wrong.

It happens as if in slow motion. It's as if they are expected.

Mike climbs out of the car, and Vesper hears the bullet before she watches it thwack into the young man's shoulder. He crumples and she doesn't have time to check if he's dead or not, pulling open the passenger door and using it as a shield, slipping her gun out.

She should have stayed in Switzerland. She can see Gustav's face  in her mind's eye. She wonders what he'd think of her now.

She takes aim, popping off a few rounds, shouting into the radio as she does so.

"009 to 007, man down. I repeat, man down."

The radio crackles in response and she swears under her breath.

"Eleanor, you okay?" she yells.

She sees a streak of blonde and then there's a reply; "I've been better,"  muttered through gritted teeth.    

Vesper smiles, despite everything.

...

She always was a good shot.

...

The creep, side-by-side, through the dark, twisting corridors.

She tries to blot out the images spiralling through her mind and focus on the task at hand.

Eleanor is behind her, checking to make sure they aren't being followed.

They come to a door, and Vesper silently gestures for her accomplice to stand on the other side of it as she prepares to open it, unsure of what she will find on the other side.

What she doesn't expect, however, is to come face to face with the woman they came here to find.

But she counts down the seconds with one hand, and then she kicks the door open, Eleanor covering her and frowns, blinking in the harsh lights.

Madeleine stares back at her.  

...

She had a dream of a future, once; a wisp of an idea held in a hand.

Her dream of a future did not include blood-spattered clothes, a body weary with fatigue, and metal clamped in her hand. Her dream of a future did not include nightmares of red on sand, and green on grey, and isolation so all consuming there was nothing else. It did not include wanting to die at twenty six years of age on a summer day in the city of canals.

What it did include was a family, people who loved her and whom she loved in return. A dream of a house in London, anywhere really, with windows and doors, and above all, a _home_. She wanted children, once. A baby to hold in her arms, a family at last; shared blood, shared genes. But above all she wanted _love_ , because of course, she had never really had that, and it remained something unattainable as she grew older. 

With James, all those years before, her dreams became solidified, changed from light shapes of what could be, to what would  be. They became nearly tangible, as if she could reach a hand out and touch them, wrap her hands around them.

And they had come crashing down on her, slashed to ribbons, laughing at her - how dare she have hopes, how dare she have dreams of what could be.

What could be became what might have been in the Venice water; her lungs screaming, her eyes burning, waiting and waiting for an oblivion that never came.

...

And what might have been plays hard on her mind; the dark room offset by light behind her, Madeleine's face peering out through the gloom.

(her, James and a child, her flesh and blood. A _home, family_ , all those things she wished to hold in her hands, all the things she so nearly had and lost - her own _fault_ , her own _fault_ , her own _fault_ )

"Vesper Lynd - the woman who so very clearly isn't dead."

Madeleine throws back her head, laughing, bitter, harsh in the half-light.

"Who knew _you_ would be my saviour?"

...

She's weak, far weaker than Vesper ever feared she would be.

"009 to 007," she mutters into the radio, "we have her. I repeat, we have her. Retreat, retreat. We have her."

The line crackles, no response.

She swears, angrily, into the freezing December air. Her breath is making clouds, stealing away her intentions and floating into the distance.

The car's burnt out, and Eleanor is sitting with Madeleine, trying to keep her warm and awake in the chill. Vesper's already given away her jacket, and pulls at her shirt-sleeves in the cold.

There's snow on the ground and in the trees, and she nearly laughs because it reminds her of Switzerland and Gustav, and how this isn't real snow, how it pales in comparison to the real thing.

Mike isn't anywhere to be found, she notes, sweeping the area once again. She doesn't know if that means he's alive or not. Her brain doesn't seem to be moving quick enough.

She meets Eleanor's gaze, and gestures for her to come over.

"What's the nearest settlement?" she asks.

Eleanor closes her eyes, thinking hard.  

"Bobija isn't far. Dodosi too."

Vesper nods, slowly. "And will we make to either of them?"

Eleanor looks from her behind her to Madeleine; drawn, pale, weak, almost certainly with injuries they are unable to see.

"I'm not sure. It's maybe half an hour; south for Dodosi, north for Bobija. Quick walking, mind - and it's not easy terrain, especially in the snow."

She takes a deep breath, glad she managed to end up with the one person who seemingly looked at a map that morning. Vesper would have no idea where to go, apart from her training which is screaming at her to run, anywhere, as quickly as possible. But with Madeleine, they can't do that. She can't run, so therefore they can't. She's not even got any shoes on.

Finally, Vesper says, "I'll radio once more then we'll go," firmly, with a sharp nod.  Eleanor turns away, walks over to Madeleine, checking she's okay in the cold.

Vesper swivels, so her back is to them, wandering into the trees, pulling the radio towards her, hoping that she will get a reply this time.

"009 to 007, come in." A pause, a heartbeat. "009 to 007. Come in."

Nothing, then: "Anyone? Please?" but all she gets is static.

She bites back a swear, wrapping her arms around herself. She doesn't want to consider what the silence means.   

"Eleanor?" she snaps, returning to the clearing. The young woman looks up at her, hopeful, but she shakes her head and the look falls away, replaced by grim determination.

"Nothing!" Madeleine says, suddenly, and Vesper is surprised to hear quiet conviction in her words. "Rein. All you tell me is nothing! And now you look at each other with shaking heads, and I know things are bad, but you do not tell me anything!"

Vesper looks from Eleanor to Madeleine.

"Let's go," she says, "before it gets dark."

...

They stumble through the trees.

It's snowing now.

Eleanor is ahead, scouting out the track, searching for the outskirts of the village she promises they must be at soon.

Vesper has her arms looped around Madeleine's waist. They are limping together, side-by-side, a perverse mockery of intimacy. But Madeleine has accepted her help with no more than a slight grumble and has put up with the agony she must be feeling. Vesper isn't sure what they have done to her, but she can see the dark web of bruises on her legs, even in the invading darkness.

It has been slow going, several hours now, and they are yet to reach anywhere they can sleep, or get help. When it was Eleanor's turn, Vesper spent hours trying to reach James and the others on the radio, but their radio must be broken, or lost, because she never gets through.

"Ralentir," Madeleine suddenly says. "Ralentir!"

Vesper knows her French. 'Slow down,' Madeleine is asking, and she does so, dropping her pace so they are standing in the cold snow.

She calls out for Eleanor to stop, and then the three of them, tired and freezing, are huddling in the chill.

"How long?" Madeleine asks Eleanor, who shrugs.

"I don't know," she says, simply.

"I can't--" Madeleine starts, breaking off. The other woman looks up at her.

"Yes, we can," Vesper snaps. "I know you're in pain and I know you don't trust me, Madeleine - I understand that, I really do, but right now we're about to freeze to death in the middle of  a Montenegrin forest and of all the ways to go, I don't fancy that. We have to keep moving."

She turns away, abruptly, moving off along the path, leaving Eleanor and Madeleine, watching her.

She wants to scream, but instead she pushes on through the trees. The snow is getting harder now, and it is quickly building up. Soon, there will be no path, nowhere to go.

"Zdavro? Zdavro? Ko je tamo?"

A voice, cutting through the white.

"Ko je tamo?" the voice demands.

She doesn't understand the language, and, instead, calls out into the dark, "Help! We need help!"    

"Ko je tamo?" comes the response, and she pushes forward, leaving Madeleine and Eleanor somewhere behind her.

"Help! Help!" She stumbles in the snow and tumbles to her knees, a third 'help' stuck on her tongue.

When she looks up, she looks straight into the face of an elderly woman, brandishing a broom. The woman spirals off, snapping out words in a language she doesn't understand.

"Help," she repeats, weary. "English?" she says next. "French? M'aidez. M'aidez."

The woman stares at her, blinking, and Vesper is sure she is about to roar off into another torrent of yelling, but their attention is taken by Madeleine and Eleanor stumbling out of the trees behind them.

The woman mutters out an exclamation that Vesper can easily equate to 'my god' or something similar when she sees Madeleine.

"M'aidez," Vesper says, again, a plea into the dark. "M'aidez."

...

It turns out Eleanor can speak and understand at least a little of what the woman is saying, and soon, the lady has allowed them to see out the worst of the storm in her barn, supplying them with food and blankets and cards to play to pass the time.

Eleanor, who explains briefly to Vesper that she once lived in Serbia as a child, stays with the woman, Anka, in the kitchen, talking, so she stays with Madeleine in the barn.

Madeleine lies down, sleeps for a while, as the storm rages outside, and Vesper sits beside her, watching her breathe. They've got this far, she cannot let her die now.

As she watches, she can see the other woman is suffering from nightmares. She is tempted to wake her, but remembers how that went for James, what seems like a lifetime ago. So she waits, and waits, and after an hour or so, she opens her eyes again.

Eleanor's still with Anka, so Vesper holds out the cards and says, "Fancy a game?" - it's a bridge, a ceasefire, something to help pass the time.

Madeleine regards her carefully, her face pale and drawn.

"Okay then."

...

And that's how she ends up playing cards with James' wife in the warm glow of fire-lamps in a barn in the middle of nowhere during a snowstorm.

She doesn't admit it, but as the game wears on, she thinks, maybe, she likes this woman. Likes her spirit, so clearly unbroken by her experiences.

...

It's as they finish a game.

Madeleine reaches out a hand. There's more colour in her cheeks now, a sign that maybe, things will be alright after all. But all the colour in the world cannot hide the angry red slash along the inside of her arm which she is so clearly trying to hide.

Her eyes linger too long on it, and Madeleine notices, drawing her arm back towards her, dropping the cards, like she's been burnt.

Vesper pushes up her shirt-sleeve, speaking as she does so.

"Your father's favourite trick, that one," and then she offers out her own arm, with the white scar obvious against her pale skin, the line marking the same track as Madeleine's.

The other woman frowns at her.

"This wasn't about you, or James, was it?" She pulls her sleeve back down, against the cold. "This was about your father."

Madeleine looks down at her lap.

"I think so," she says, after a long moment. "They thought he would come and save me. It's such a shame he is dead, non?"

Her eyes dart from the spilled cards and up to Vesper.

"He did that to you?" She nods, slowly. "When? Is that why...?" she adds, trailing off, and Vesper knows she is thinking about that day in the library, years ago now, when she realised who James had married.

"Yes. You're his daughter. I thought..."

"Why did he...?" Madeleine leaves her question open, unable to form the words to describe what she knows her father must have done.   

"Because I had something he wanted," she replies, shrugging.

"I knew he was a monster, but..." There's a dangerous edge to Madeleine's words.

"I've been through worse," she says.

Madeleine stays silent.

"Another game?" Vesper says, picking up the cards and shuffling them.

Madeleine regards her, carefully. She can see the weight of a question form on her lips, but then with a shake of the head, and downcast eyes, it's gone. Instead, she nods and Vesper deals again.

...

She's outside.

It's stopped snowing now and the world is white, and still, and cold. It would be beautiful but for the biting chill, but for the fact they are lost in the landscape, in this hell-hole.

But despite all that, she likes it. It reflects her, she thinks. Utter isolation, cut off. And the stillness helps her rushing mind.

She hears snow crunching underfoot and turns.

Eleanor walks towards her.

"Where's Madeleine?" the other woman calls.

"Sleeping," Vesper replies.

Eleanor's next to her now, and for the first time, takes the moment to study her. She's younger than she first thought, early twenties maybe, still with the last remnants of youthful innocence. She looks tired, but there's a fire, still, in her eyes that tells Vesper she hasn't been at this game very long.

She's smoking, arms folded against the chill, taking a long drag, the red glow of the end of the cigarette burning in the cold. She probably got them from Anka.

"Something I picked up on missions," Eleanor says, shrugging, when she sees her watching. Vesper can't find it within herself to tell her to stop. She can remember her scotch habit, her own lifeline from hell. They all need something, she reasons. What will a cigarette or a bottle of scotch do that a gun can't?

Eleanor kicks her feet on the snow and Vesper leans back against the wood of the barn. They should probably go inside, out of the cold, before they die of exposure but they don't.

"Why?" Eleanor asks, slowly, her cold breath mingling with the smoke and curling away, into the dark. "Why help him?"

"James?" Vesper says, somewhat surprised at the turn in conversation.

"Yeah."

"Why not?" she replies, shrugging.

"Because," Eleanor begins, confidently, but then she falters. "It seems strange to ask your mistress to help find your wife, that's all," she settles on, finally.

Vesper frowns, and turns to Eleanor. Then she's laughing, unable to stop, doubling over, wracked by hysterics.

Eleanor's looking concerned as she rights herself, finally able to talk. 

"I'm not his _mistress_ ," she says, as Eleanor's face crumples into a frown. Mistress is such a quaint term, a hangover from days gone by. But by any definition of the word - _the other woman, the lover_ \- she is none of these things to James. 

"But you..." the other woman says, but she leaves the sentence hanging, though they both know what she intended to say.

"Yes," Vesper says. "But I had my chance." She shrugs, dismissive.

"I betrayed him, once," she says, quietly, into the deathly silence. Lightly, it begins to snow again. She wonders if they will ever get out of this ghostly place. "This," she says, gesturing around them, at the snow and darkness, "is the price I pay. This, MI6, all of it. Everyone has their price. This is mine."

Eleanor looks at her feet, awkward.

"When you're older, you'll know what I mean," Vesper says. "If you stay in the service, of course." She gives a wry smile. "My advice is to get out as soon as possible."

Eleanor smokes a little more, considering her words.

"I like it," she replies.

"You won't when you have to live with it."

"I don't have anything else," Eleanor shrugs. There's something there, and Vesper knows when she says _anything_ , she means _anyone_.

"There's a whole world out there. Seven billion people. Who says there's no one out there?" Vesper pauses, wraps her arms around her against the cold. There's snow in her hair now, on her clothes. "Just because you don't have a family," she continues, "doesn't mean you never can."

"And you have a family?" Eleanor asks, incredulity lacing her words.

"I didn't get out. I let it consume me." A heartbeat, then, "I could have."

"With James?"

She lets out a laugh, almost bitter but not quite. "Yes. But after him too. If I'd walked away."

Eleanor shrugs, unconvinced.

"Ever wondered what it's all for?" Vesper asks. "And if you give me some crap about it being for Queen and Country..."

Eleanor looks away, into the distance, and takes a long drag on her cigarette.

"I don't bother. I've never really known much else."

"I did." She smiles, at a memory. Her youth, university; romances, idle gossip, nights out, friendships - normality. She almost doesn't recognise herself. "I had a life, before all this. And now I'm a shadow. A no one." A pause, then; "It will kill you."

"And that's the difference," Eleanor says. "You had a life, I never did."

Vesper shrugs, turns back to the barn. She shouldn't have left Madeleine for a minute, let alone this long. Before she goes, hand resting on the door, she turns back, to the solitary figure, dark, standing in the snow, smoking, the red cigarette burning in the black.

"But one day, you'll do something, and you'll find your price to pay, believe me. Everyone does."

...

It's somewhere around early morning. Eleanor's nowhere to be found.

She wakes, from a fitful sleep, to find Madeleine watching her. 

"You were screaming," she says.

Vesper looks down at her hands, shrugging. 

"Nightmares."

"You were saying James' name. Asking him for forgiveness." She sighs, she doesn't want to have this conversation. "Why do you need him to forgive you?"

"It doesn't matter. It was a long time ago."

"And yet you still dream of it?"

It's suddenly cold in the barn, a wind whipping under doors and round them.

"Est-ce que tu l'aime? Après tout ce temps?"

Madeleine's looking at her with a hard gaze, and she almost flinches under it. Vesper knows that she knows she has understood what she has asked.

 _Do you love him? After all this time?_     

She thinks about lying, but she's too tired. She remembers Gustav's words, spoken what feels like years ago. Running away won't get you anywhere. 

"Yes."

Madeleine regards her carefully.

"And does he love you?" she asks, in English this time, quiet, as if she doesn't wish to ask the question, but feels like she has to.

"I don't know."

"I think he did." She doesn't know what to say to that.  "I think he did," Madeleine says again, breaking her gaze away and looking down at her hands. "I think, maybe, he still does."

Vesper has no answer.     

...

By morning, the air is clear.

Anka has told Eleanor about a man in the village who has a car, and is driving to Podgorica early in the morning. Anka said the man would probably take them, if not, the walk will be long and torturous, and Anka warns it will be impossible in the snow.

Eleanor goes to waylay the driver, her grasp on the language giving her a head-start. Vesper wraps her arms around Madeleine, and they limp together through the drifts, neither speaking.

Eleanor walks back towards them after twenty minutes, smiling.

"We've got a green light," she says, and Vesper breathes a sigh of relief.

...

She sits with Madeleine in the back of the van. Eleanor travels with the driver, and she can hear her chatting amiably with him in a language she doesn't understand.

It takes a good few hours, stopping and starting again when snow covers the road. It's uncomfortable, bumpy and freezing.

Madeleine sleeps most of the way.

Vesper's glad.

...

She tells Eleanor to take Madeleine to the hospital, and instead of going with them, she heads south of the river, towards their hotel.

She is tired, aching all over, her clothes torn and Madeleine still has her jacket. She's cold, but she's used to that by now.

The lift journey is strange. She isn't sure what she'll find when she opens the door.

...

She pushes it open with one hand and immediately, dark shapes stir.

She raises her eyes, finds herself level with the barrels of four guns.

"Shit," Eve mutters, lowering her gun. "You're alive?"

"Vesper?" she hears James whisper, reverent, like a prayer, like she's come back from the dead, again.

Before she speaks, she turns her head on the side. Mike's lying on the sofa, pale, patched up, but clearly breathing.

"We got her."

...

She stays at the hotel, James goes to the hospital.

It's over now. She helped him. It's over.

She sleeps for a while, whilst the two suits and Eve pack up their equipment around her, but she's not a good sleeper and it only comes in fractured heartbeats, here and there.   

There were no questions, of that she's glad. Eleanor can fill them in on the details.

She gets up after a few hours, pads into the seating area of the suite. Eleanor has returned from the hospital and is talking, softly, with Mike.

The other two operatives are sitting next to them, conversing quietly. Eve's by the window.

She grabs some food out of a mini-fridge and crosses so she's standing, staring out at the rushing traffic.

"I thought you were dead," Eve notes. "James, he never doubted you. It seems I was wrong and he was right."

She shrugs.

"Should you go to the hospital, get checked out?" 

There's snow on all of the rooftops, it's thick on the pavements too.     

"It was just damn cold out there. That's all."

...

James comes back from the hospital at gone midnight. Eve and the suits, Mike and Eleanor included, are gone. They left hours ago. Vesper doesn't know what to do with herself so she stayed.

The door creeks open. She's watching dead-end crap on the TV.

He comes from the dark into the light. He looks tired, haggard and strained.

He stands behind the sofa.

She switches the TV off, plunging them into painful silence.

"Thank you," he says.

She smiles, but he can only see the back of her head.

She turns to face him, twisting so she's leaning her forearms on the back of the sofa, and looks up at him. He's staring at her with hunger in his eyes and she looks down at the floor.

"You saved her," he says.

She shrugs.

"I did what I had to."

"No--" he says but she cuts him off.

"Yes. Don't say it was any more than that."

"You did it for me." She closes her eyes, tightly.

Before she opens her eyes, she feels his hand, cold from the outside air, on her face.

"James, " she says slowly. "Madeleine's safe, I helped you. Let me go."

She opens her eyes.

"What if I can't?"

She smiles, sadly.

"You love Madeleine." It's not a question, it's a statement that she knows to be true. They wouldn't be here if he didn't.

"Yes," he replies, and even though she knew it, her heart involuntarily sinks. "But not like this."

She puts her hand on his outstretched arm and gently pushes it away.

"I'm going to walk out of here now," she says, her voice quiet yet commanding, "and you are going to go back to the hospital, and neither of us will regret anything. Okay?"

She turn and climbs off the sofa. She heads to the door, but she winces when she finds him blocking her way like she hoped he wouldn't.

"Fourteen years, James," she says, tiredly. "It's been fourteen years. Let me go."

She thinks, for moment, that he's not going to move.

But then he does.

...

She leaves the hotel and goes to the airport.

Switzerland is beautiful when she lands.

The hotel is just as she left it.

...

She goes up to the front desk.

Gustav is there, head down, organising paperwork.

"Good morning," she says, a laugh in her voice.

He straightens up, and his eyes go wide when he sees her.

She smiles.

...

They talk into the early hours of the next day.

Never once does Gustav mention her disappearing act or the note or the money. Instead Gustav tells his silly stories and she laughs and it snows outside.

When morning breaks, Gustav falls silent.

"What is it?" she asks, quietly.

"The money, älskling?" he questions. "I do not know why..." he trails off. "It is me who must be thankful."

She shakes her head, looks down at her hands in her lap.

"It was nothing," she shrugs.

"Nothing?" he replies, incredulous. She looks up at him, pleads with him to accept her words as the truth. He regards her warily, but then he seems to let it drop.

"Did you find it, älskling?" he says, suddenly, watching her with careful eyes. 

She frowns.

"Repentance." A pause. "Did you stop running away, min kära?"

Her eyes are glued to her hands. She cannot look at him. She feels like crying.

"Gustav, I think..." She breaks off, painfully. "I think, yes, I did."

...

She goes to Sweden, in the end. Buys a little place in the capital, decides this is where she will make her life now. Because of Gustav. Because he was a friend to her.

It's beautiful place, and she settles in quietly. She gets a job in a cafe on a tiny little street, works on her Swedish and soon she is fluent.

She finds herself, strangely, enjoying the work. It is the opposite of Switzerland, with its isolation and anonymity. There are people everywhere, people talking to her. This is not running away. This is facing the fact life is to be lived, to fade the guilt away. She knows Gustav has asked his children to check on her, and they do, inviting her round for family dinners and events. Sometimes she accepts, sometimes she enjoys solitude and declines. They seem to understand.

Some of the shadows lift away. Guilt is still there, as it will always be, but the weight lessens, just enough so that she can look at herself in the mirror.

And that's enough for her.

...

It's June. Six months since Christmas, and James and Madeleine. She has made a life for herself, for the first time since Venice and the blue water and the red dress that haunt her.

And someone knocks at her front door. It's not a surprise anymore. So when she opens it, she frowns, blinking into the weak summer light.

She goes to shut the door, but he puts his hand on the wood, his eyes imploring her.

She relents, and they stand face to face.

"Where's Madeleine?" she asks.

"I don't know," he admits, and she wants to believe him, she really does, but she can't. But she looks at his hand, splayed on the wood. His left hand. With no ring.

"She wanted to travel the world," he shrugs.

"And you?" she asks.

"I couldn't," he says. "I couldn't."

She can remember the hotel room, her plea. She wonders if this can ever be a good idea.

"I couldn't let you go. I can't."

She watches him. She wonders if she's managed to pay her price.

"Would you like to come in, James?"

...


End file.
